It's a breezy, sunny morning here in Francistown. All 5 guys got in safely yesterday and I can hear them now, having a planning meeting in the other room. There are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up, and we need some sort of schedule and plan for moving forward. The task seems too big and unattainable at this point, but where we are unable, God is sufficient. I really say that sincerely, because we are working with some odds against us. We are in a different culture, a different weather (exhausting heat), and a different time zone. Many things simply take more time to do and keep up with, just given the nature of this country.
I compiled a book of contacts yesterday, using a book that had previously been put together, a stack of postcards with scribbled notes, and several pages of names and phone numbers taken down by other people. These contacts range from already saved and baptized converts who have been studying the Bible since the beginning of the year to people just met on the street last week. The book numbers at around 70 people, all who we need to contact, meet with, and try to set up weekly or daily studies while we are here in the country. I think I am most overwhelmed by the number of ladies in the book which is almost equal to the number of men. My mom and I are responsible to contact all the ladies, but there are only two of us, where there are currently seven guys in the house to contact the men.
We also organized the correspondence courses, getting a workable system set up so that they will not take too much time each week. The post box must be checked every couple days, the returned studies graded, certificates printed, new contacts added to the database, and all the new studies mailed out. I've done correspondence schools in a couple different countries, but it is always an interesting challenge to learn a new postal system. There was quite a bit of literature in the house, spread around and not very organized. It all had to be inventoried and boxed up, the boxes numbered, and stacked in the garage. With so many people coming and going, it is good for us to be as organized as possible.
On a different note, I did my laundry this morning. :) There isn't a washer or dryer here in the house, and though we do have the option of taking clothes to a laundry service, this of course costs money, and it takes them a couple days to get everything done. (As an interesting side note - when you take the clothes to the laundry service, they dump them into a huge burlap bag, then hook it up to a giant scale. You pay by the kilogram, 11 pula for wash/dry/fold and 14 pula for wash/dry/iron/fold. [12 pula=$2, and a week's worth of laundry for the four in my family weighed 19 kg.] They then dump the bag out and inventory every item by type - socks, pants, shirts, etc. You pay up front and are given the list of items, then come back a couple days later to take it all home.) Having limited clothing available to begin with, I think we are going to try to handwash as much as possible. This takes me back to my days in Thailand, when our washing machine decided to randomly streak our clothing with blue and red stripes. If I remember correctly, we finally got it fixed, but not before we spent a couple months handwashing items every day. It isn't too bad if everyone takes care of their own clothing, and if you spend a few minutes every morning to wash your clothes from the previous day. If you let it build up too long, it becomes a bit overwhelming, as you can probably imagine. I don't mind handwashing my own clothes, but I hope they don't give me the job of handwashing everyone's clothes. :)
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